- The need for different tools to manage different types of data.
- Silos of customer data that reside in different systems and hasn’t yet been integrated to provide the much-desired 360-degree view of consumers.
- Integrating and processing all of this diverse data can be costly.
- Specialized skills are required to implement these systems and analyze the data.
- Only about 20 percent of the people at most companies have the ability to digest this complex data.
TDWI’s Global Conference Focuses on Hadoop, B.I. Tools
The Data Warehouse Institute’s Global Conference in San Diego, scheduled to run through Aug. 3, offers ample evidence that the era of Big Data is truly upon us: a number of companies are reporting data warehouses fast approaching the half-a-petabyte range. What’s startling, however, is that giant number isn’t anything like an upper limit: we are about to collectively experience a flood of information that will make today’s data warehouses seem tiny. There’s a host of new data types that companies want to add to the information mix, Harriet Fryman, director of business intelligence software at IBM’s Ottawa R&D Labs, told attendees at the conference. Making use of these new types of data presents both a challenge and an opportunity, with the ultimate goal to understand customers in deeper ways and make better business decisions. While customer activity generated on social networks, mobile devices, and the Web are all responsible for this rich assortment of data, sensors are also the next big thing: deployed in a wide range of industries from healthcare to utilities, they provide new insights into customer behavior and business performance. “I personally think that applying analytics to sensor data is the next big thing,” said Becky Hanenkrat, IBM Big Data sales specialist. However, there are a number of challenges to be overcome in order to reach this Big Data nirvana, according to conference attendees such as Hiren Deliwala, managing director for business systems at Amedisys in Baton Rouge, LA. His company, which is in the home health business, focuses primarily on managing the data warehouse for financial and business data. “We’re really not looking at unstructured data yet,” he said. The big data industry is still building the infrastructure needed to integrate structured and unstructured data, according to the many solution providers and analysts at the conference. “The next stage will be to make people more analytical in their operations,” said Michael Corcoran, senior vice president at Information Builders. “I don’t get excited about big data. I get excited about how companies make use of Big Data—integrating social and text analytics, visualization and search.” Some of the key issues under discussion included: